I give 9 a 2

I went to see 9 last night. While I'm not a Tim Burton fanboy, I generally like most of his movies. One of my all time favorites is The Nightmare Before Christmas. 9 is a different story all together. NOTE: no spoilers here.

Let's start with the good. On the surface, the movie looks great. I can't say that I felt I was watching cutting edge 3D, but it was still pretty to look at. Unfortunately, that's all I can think of to praise the movie for.

On the flip side, the movie is short, and by short I mean almost ridiculously short. On top of that, the pace of the movie felt rushed. One of my friends theorized that perhaps it was rushed out the door to meet the deadline of 9/9/9. I almost hope that's the case so perhaps the movie can redeem itself when it comes out for DVD/Blu-Ray.

The other bad news is that it felt like they just ripped out pieces of other post-apocalyptic movies, animated them, and threw them in the movie. Lastly, I felt very little attachment to any of the characters. If the main character was fed to the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal, I think I would have probably just thought, "hey, nice Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference".

There is one potential bright spot for this movie. It may be that adults are not the target audience and that kids might like it. It's about the right length , it follows the beat to death typical hero formula, and it's pretty to look at. I just hope I save at least one adult from going to see this without being prepared for what they are not getting.

Goodbye Dear Friend

On April 19, 2004 our pup Katie came to live with us. At the time I don't think we knew what a gift Katie would be. I doubt there are many dogs that can live up to the standard that she has set for future furry residents. Like most Sheltie's she was reserved, but when she got to know you she was the one of the sweetest pups. She was never shy on kisses for people she knew (whether they wanted them or not) and always wanted to be around family and friends. She was always ready to do anything or go anywhere as long as it was with us and she was really tolerant of the kids.

The one thing Katie loved to do more than anything else was to chase a tennis ball. When we were at my parents the mere mention of playing ball would cause her to run the Sheltie circle. My parent's have a large back yard and her paws would propel her like a rocket to the back of the yard waiting for me to thow. We could always tell when she was tired (but still wanted more) when her tongue would hang out the side of her mouth.

There were many other things that she loved to do. Riding in the car was a big one, although to this day we're not entirely sure why. She'd get all excited, hop in the car, and then lay down. She loved to take walks, and I can remember plenty of times when it was too cold or rainy outside in the morning where I would get the "So, we're going for a walk right? right? right? right?" and then the look of "awwww" when we didn't. Nothing like sad puppy eyes to make you wish you could change the weather.

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. Late last year she had some problems eating. With a few visits to the vet and some medication we thought her problems were over. Sadly, early this year her problems returned and after many vet visits, an ultrasound, and lastly surgery, we got one of the worst diagnosis we could. It was Lymphoma and there was no way to remove it. While we decided to try chemotherapy, our hopes were tempered by the fact that at best her chances or remission were 50%. It's been a heart breaking summer with plenty of ups and mostly downs.

While her therapy seemed to be helping at first, by some time in July it was apparent that she was not going to be with us much longer. This last week has been the hardest for all of us. There's very few things as horrible as watching someone you love waste away with almost nothing you can do. By the end she wasn't eating, barely drinking, and it was apparent she was absolutely miserable. So this Saturday I did what had to be done. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I took a friend, companion, and in some ways my child to the vet to relieve her suffering. Katie left our house, but not our hearts the morning of August 23rd.

There are two moments in my life I doubt I will ever forget. The first is when I met Katie in the back yard of her foster home. The other is the last moments I got to spend with her before she left us.

I would like to thank all our friends and family for their thoughts, prayers, and support. Without them this would have been all that much harder. I would like to also thank all the Veterinarians that tried so hard to save Katie, especially Dr. Candice.

Rest in Peace Katie Paeth
September 1, 2000 - August 23,2009
"And if these pictures have anything important to say to future generations, it's this: I was here. I existed. I was young, I was happy, and someone cared enough about me in this world to take my picture."

NOTE: The quote is from the movie One Hour Photo, but I didn't feel right about listing the source of the quote considering the movie content and the content of this post.

Reality vs. Writing

From what I've gathered from tweets from one of my favorite Celebs Felicia Day, this year's Emmy awards will not be televising the awards for writing. While I agree this sucks for many reasons, the biggest is that without good writing most shows would be horrible. The writers that make these shows great should really be recognized for the work that they do.

On the other end of the spectrum we've got the "Reality" shows that are still going to be televised. Just what we need, more recognition for "stupid fun" TV. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy Wipeout and some of the other reality shows, but I prefer a well written engaging show with long story arcs like Dollhouse over something that I'll watch and forget shortly after. I guess if you feel the need to award the best of the best wow-look-how-hard-that-guy-just-got-nailed-in-the-head-TV show it's best that it's in it's own category, but do we really need to promote this stuff?

Now for the reality check. No pun inteded. The unfortunate fact of the matter is that most people (at least that I know) don't care who the writers of a show are. I think if they did we'd see the good shows rise to the top much faster and the mediocre shows disappear much quicker. The reason I point this out is that this is probably the reason that the writers awards are not being televised. The producers of the show are trying to get as many people to watch the show as possible and they felt something needed to be cut. Am I saying it's right? No. Is there a solution? probably not in the short term.

I know this isn't exactly the most elegant of blog posts, but I'm not a professional writer. Maybe I should start my own reality show.


EDIT: It has been pointed out to me that there will be some writing awards still shown. Please see the first comment on this post for more info. Thanks "Mathew". This is yet another reason why I don't do this for a living

Yoono Interface

This morning when I started up firefox, I got an update to Yoono. If you haven't used yoono before it's a great little firefox plugin that allows you to manage a lot of your interactions with a large number of the popular social networks such as twitter, facebook, myspace, AIM, and a few others. After a little poking around the new interface I got a little frustrated because a few of my favorite features were not working the way I expected. So naturally I decided to post my displeasure on my twitter feed. I'm not sure why I was surprised, but I got a response from Yoono's support on twitter in a fairly short amount of time asking me what I was unhappy about.

While I'm not sure if I'm more sensitive then most to user interface issues, I'm certainly moe vocal then some. I think this comes from my background as a developer (web and other). This also means I understand how incredibly hard it is to get a really good interface to a program.

Let me say that any company that wants to succeed should follow the example of yoono. They are actively looking for feedback posted about their product and contacting users to see what they think. On top of that they are doing what some successful companies already know... negative feedback is not necessarily bad as long as you can look at the feedback as a way to better serve your users. I think many people don't really understand what that last statement really means.
My current issues with the yoono interface are as follows:

1. I can't find where to change any of my twitter account settings. At this point if I changed my password for twitter I'd have no clue where to change it in yoono. I'm sure it's just that I'm not looking in the right place, but if I can't find it, there's got to be plenty of other people that can't as well. Also, don't tell me to look at a user manual, this is the kind of thing that should not require reference material to change.


2. The @replies that other people post to me don't show up in my updates tab. Again, this might be a setting (that I can't find) or Yoono support said it might be a bug. Granted I can still see the @replies in my @ tab, but that's bit of a pain. One nice thing that they pointed out though is the "More" link allows you to see conversations. While not a replacement for my @replies in the update tab, I still like it


3. There used to be a way to "archive" the updates from my friends. I really liked this feature, since that meant I could clear my updates list and only see what was new. There is a mark as read feature, but that doesn't seem to do anything. I'm not sure if it's a bug or an error between chair and keyboard.

Like I said earlier I got a reply from Yoono's support and I hope they can either fix these bugs (if the are bugs), or add options to the program to let me use the program like I want to use it. Regardless, I'm still a faithful Yoono user and would just like to tell them to keep up the good work.

Mock Me A Website

Here's an idea for a product if anyone would care to make it. I'm frequently tasked with creating a new web based product. The problem is that using even a WYSIWYG editor is too slow for what I want when we're having brainstorming or general design sessions. What I need is a program that I could fire up and very quickly lay out the general flow and page design. Here's my wishlist:

1. I can zoom out to see the overall map of the site


2. I can zoom into a page and see the rough design of the page


3. I can draw a component on the page

I can make notes on the page

4. I can link a component to go to another page


5. From the zoomed out view I can move pages around


6. From the zoomed out view I can see the links between pages


7. I can edit the source of the HTML and when I preview the page the sketched page can be an overlay on top of the page so I can compare the "real" page with the "sketched" page

If this already exists then tell me where. I'd love to spend time and create this, but I know better then to think I can make the time for something like this.

linux + bamboo = still aweful handwriting

I just spent about an hour or so getting my new Wacom Bamboo "fun" working in linux. It took some time to get it to work properly because of one little tiny step in the How-To that I was following. As you can see though it works and my handwriting is still just as aweful when captured by a pen tablet as it is with a pen and paper.

Fun with SPAM

So I just got the following SPAM in my inbox and was thinking what would be a fun way to respond...

Your Email Have Won Reference Number: XXXXXXXX Claims of BMW SARLOON CAR AND £45,000.00 pounds has been won by you in our BMW STARTING OF YEAR PROMOTION 2009 .get back to this office with your Names ....Depends on who you are, some people call me honey, sweetie, dad, son, @$$hole, smartass, and many more
Address ....Mr. is usually good to start with
Country...Northrend
Phone No...+69-555-byteme
Occupation..Warlock
Sex..Age I'm married, so we'll just go with occasionaly. Do you want physical or mental age? What form or measurement are you using?

Best Regards
Mr Richard Gray.